Mobile SEO is more important than ever!
Do you ever feel dependent on your smartphone? The dependency of our mobile devices extends far beyond the ability to call someone. Our smartphones create instant access to text messages, social media, games and email. Our smartphones also help us find what we need instantaneously. Hungry? For the famished, a quick search of €œItalian restaurants near me€ in Google maps will show you a list nearby Italian restaurants. If you need a €œDigital Marketing Agency in Dallas€ simply use the Google app or better yet ask Siri who will cheerfully provide a helpful list of search results to choose from.
If you have a business – isn’t it your ultimate goal to have Siri or Google Maps display YOUR company information in these web search results? If you haven’t started thinking about mobile delivery of your most important marketing tool – your website – it’s imperative that you start, now!
When you view your website, do you consider how it looks on a smartphone?
There are approximately 6.378 Billion smartphone users in the world today – that accounts for over 80% of the world’s population.
The number of users relying on their smartphones for web searches has increased dramatically over the past few years. In 2012, 90% of all web searches came from desktop devices. In 2017 only 50% of web searches came from desktop devices. Now in 2021, that number has dropped to 42%. This means that almost 60% of visitors looking for your product or service are doing so on a smartphone – and this number continues to rise.
What will happen if my web site is not mobile friendly?
If your website isn’t mobile friendly, Google will downrank your site and it will never rank well in the search engines.
Google’s preference is given to sites that are fully optimized for mobile devices.
Geek Speak: It Started with Google’s Mobilegeddon Update
Mobile search became Google’s focus back in 2015 when they rolled out €œMobilegeddon€ which began favoring mobile-friendly sites. At the time, this only applied to mobile search results.
Later in 2017, Google began working on mobile-first indexing. This is exactly what it sounds like – if your site is mobile friendly, it is indexed first above non-mobile friendly web sites. Google switched to mobile-first indexing for all websites in September 2020.
Don’t speak geek? This means Google’s preference is given to sites that are fully optimized for mobile devices.
Fun fact: Did you know that there are multiple ways to rank in Google? Google search, Google maps and Google mobile. Bing and Yahoo also have mobile search engines.
You can rank differently for each search engine.
How Do I Change My Website for Mobile?
There are 3 ways to reconfigure/redesign your website for mobile:
- Responsive Design
- Dynamic Serving
- Mobile Site
Responsive Design
RECOMMENDED BY GOOGLE. All pages use the same URL for all devices. Changes to layout are dependent on CSS which changes the rendering depending on your screen size and device type. With a responsive design, your website will look great on any device, with minimum effort and time spent.
Pros: Single URL, fast loading time, user friendly, cost-effective, easy to implement
Cons: Time consuming to convert
Dynamic Serving
The server reads what device is requesting the page (mobile, tablet, or desktop) and responds with HTML/CSS for that particular device. This method is more time-consuming and expensive as you have to create multiple versions of the same webpage.
Pros: Single URL, fast loading time
Cons: Time-consuming updating multiple sites, costly to build and maintain, device detection not always accurate, extra server loads needed
Mobile Site – Separate from main site
NOT RECOMMENDED BY GOOGLE. This approach uses a separate URL to direct mobile devices to when the main URL detects a mobile device. For instance, a mobile device visiting www.yourwebsite.com would be redirected to m.yourwebsite.com which is a mobile version of your website. This was a popular configuration years ago but now business owners are finding that this setup causes serious issues with duplicate content leading to blacklisting of one or both sites.
Pros: Less server load, mobile content can be altered for mobile users
Cons: Different URLs, more expensive, hard to maintain, costly solutions, not recommended by Google
Great Info – So What Do I Need to Do?
Google and most SEO experts recommend that you use a responsive design for your website in 2021.
If your website is mobile friendly, you’re good to go! If it’s not, and you want your website to appear in search engine results to increase visibility and visitors to your site, you will need to create a new mobile friendly site. Of course, we would love to help you with that – see our special below!
In Closing, Here’s a Special Offer
While having a mobile-friendly website is imperative for a website to rank well, it’s just one part of SEO. Technical SEO errors such as slow site speed/load times are another HUGE factor in getting your website to rank well. If your website doesn’t load quickly – preferably less than one second and no more than three seconds – Google will penalize you heavily.
Through December 31st, we are offering our Web Site Audit Report for only $199* (regular $399) when you use the code IVAA2021 (This offer expires 12/31/2021). In addition to checking your site for mobile-friendliness, we will also show you all the areas in your website, along with the severity of each issue. Learn more here.
*If you decide to build a new, mobile friendly website with us, the $199 fee for your audit report will be applied towards the cost of a new web site.
